I have a new chapter out! My paper “A Bold Question: Consent and the Experimental Subject in Frankenstein” is out in the book A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, edited by Claire Fitzpatrick and published by IFWG.
If you’re a science fiction writer, and I am, or a horror writer, and I’m that too, then you’re likely to have stumbled across Frankenstein at some point. And yes, Shelley wrote a lot of other things but let’s face it: this is the one that everyone knows, the one that stuck. So, unimaginative as it may be, when I saw the call for contributors I went to what I knew: Frankenstein, and science. Because let’s face it: Victor Frankenstein? Is both a very good and a very bad scientist. He’s certainly not that good a man, but let’s stick to the science here.
You can argue that scientific ethics was in its infancy when he was out robbing graveyards and cobbling together the reanimated dead, and you’d be right. You can argue that he had the financial wherewithal to avoid scrutiny and professional oversight, and you’d be right there too. In many ways, genius aside, his practice of science was… debatable. It does, however, make for a fun paper. I had a great deal of enjoyment in writing it anyway, and I hope that you enjoy reading it.
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